Energy & Environment

NPR's Ailsa Chang speaks with Mother Jones editor-in-chief Clara Jeffery about advice she's learned living under smoky skies after 22 years in San Francisco.

Everyone knows that red means danger, but how did purple become a cautionary color? At an EPA conference in the late 1990s, attendees nearly came to blows over color coding on the Air Quality Index.

Population growth has long been a source of worry in India, which now has more people than China: 1.46 billion residents. But some experts are optimistic about the impact of this population boom.

From particulate matter to the AQI, here's what you need to know to protect yourself as the smoky haze settles over much of the East Coast.

Lava began erupting at the Halemaʻumaʻu crater and reached heights of 13 to 30 feet and covered an area of approximately 370 acres. The biggest threat to those in the area is volcanic gas.

The Canadian wildfire season has started early and already broken records, with toxic smoke drifting south to the U.S. and many air quality alerts in place.

A good chunk of the United States is dealing with smoke following a series of wildfires in Canada. Winds have carried the smoke across the Northeast and parts of the Midwest.

Some of the worst air quality was recorded in the Great Lakes region and in Pennsylvania, New York, New Jersey and the Washington, D.C., metro area.

A growing legal movement to grant natural entities like rivers and forests legal rights is gaining traction in the U.S., and environmentalists are now setting their sights on the Mississippi River.

Kansas and Oklahoma wheat farmers will reap the smallest harvest in more than 60 years. Persistent drought withered much of the crop.